Two UK-based potato companies have signed a five-year deal with the James
Hutton Institute's Mylnefield Research Service (MRS) subsidiary to
continue a potato-breeding programme that originally started in 2005.

Taylor
Food Group, which owns Taypack, QV Foods and its subsidiary Pseedco are
all based at Moncur, Perthshire. According to QV, the deal with MRS is
worth a undisclosed six-figure sum.

Breeder Finlay Dale, who leads
the Hutton’s potato team, will use the latest technological advances,
including the recent mapping of the potato genome to develop new
varieties from salad potatoes to baking potatoes.

The previous
breeding programme has left a legacy of hundreds of crosses which will
be available for further use, but attention has recently focused on an
unnamed selection which is very near to commercialisation and is grown
on a field scale.

The variety has been multiplied by the Brown
family at West Adamston, near Dundee and is showing good resistance to
tuber blight and to blackleg resistance.

It also shows partial resistance to pallida, a type of potato cyst nematode and good immunity to virus Y and powdery scab.

The
involvement of seed potato company Pseedco and its fresh and prepared
potato parent company QV Foods will bring a ready market for the new MRS
varieties.